Prayer
There are as many ways of praying as there are people, and finding our prayer style as a bridge to God is a gift. Some like to walk on the seashore, or a rugged mountain and taste the beauty of creation while reciting a psalm as background music to help articulate wonder at the greatness and mystery of the universe. Many are put off by prayer in the false belief that they must wear their Sunday best before God. We come to God as we are, warts and all, in the same way that we go to a doctor for healing remedies. It’s not a case of cleaning the house before the cleaners come. It’s a friendship where airs and graces are off limits because we might be able to fool ourselves, but we can’t fool God. It’s helpful to remember that God loves us not for our good deeds, but for who we are, a member of God’s family, even if we’re not conscious of that reality.
Excerpted from Reimagining Religion: A Jesuit Vision by Jim Maher SJ (p.45)
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‘Aha!’ Moments
Jesus, help me to continue to track your disguises so that I may be alert to the endless ways you are present to me. I don’t want to miss you as you pass by. You stripped yourself of divine glory in becoming just like us, so it took a huge leap of faith for people to identify you and say, ‘Look, there goes the Son of God!.’ And then came your Passion. Your disguise was now complete. Your enemies said, ‘Come down from that Cross, then we’ll believe your claims’. But you didn’t. You kept your disguise. If you were God, then it seemed that God was dead.
But then you rose from the dead, only to disguise yourself again – as the gardener, as the traveller on Emmaus Road, as the visitor who asked for something to eat, as the figure standing on the lake shore at dawn. You gave hints: your message of peace, your forgiveness, your special way of breaking bread, your wounds – these helped doubting disciples, each in their own time, to reach their ‘Aha!’ moment. Is such slow revelation a kindness for us who cannot bear too much reality?
Excerpted from I Am Infinitely Loved: A Month of Meditations by Brian Grogan SJ (p.56)
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Is there one Christian spirituality or many?
I may be so moved by the compassion I see at work in the person and ministry of Jesus that compassion becomes the cornerstone of my spirituality. My whole life becomes an expression of the compassion that flows through me. It affects all my decision-making. You, on the other hand, may be captivated and challenged by the story of the rich young man. Because of this particular resonance you embrace a spirituality of radical simplicity. You model your life on that of the poor Jesus, who ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ (Phil. 2:7). The fact that we have different responses to the Gospel does not mean that either of us is living more authentically than the other. However, each of us is choosing – or has been chosen! – to live the one Christian spirituality in a particular way and with a distinctive emphasis.
Excerpted from God Ever Greater: Exploring Ignatian Spirituality by Brian O’Leary SJ (p.25)
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Do You Simply Love Me?
I was greatly helped when Pope Francis wrote in The Joy of the Gospel (n.6), ‘When everything is said and done, I am infinitely loved’. This massive statement about your view of me, Lord, means that, no matter how I let you down, you delight in me as I am.
Just as the sun heats me without making a choice about it, you don’t have to make a choice about loving me: you simply do it! Often I’d prefer that you wouldn’t intervene in my life as you do, but if I can believe that your love for me is unconditional, total, like the warmth of the sun, I can manage what comes my way. You simply love me!
Excerpted from I Am Infinitely Loved: A Month of Meditations by Brian Grogan SJ (p.8)
‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’
At three o’clock in the afternoon there was darkness and a great earthquake. It was as if the very foundations of hell were shaking, but the power of the love of Christ was undefeated and unquenchable. The joy of Easter was yet to come, but the victory was being won on Good Friday. In the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings for us lies our salvation, and that is why we think deeply about the Words drawn from him in the hours of his suffering. If we take our eyes from the cross we are lost; if we fail to contemplate the magnitude of the free offering of his life, then we will never be drawn to the cross with him, and we will spend our lives in lesser pursuits. The whole of our faith is determined by the events of this day; all else contributes to our salvation, but the cross of Jesus lies at its heart. The fact that Jesus hung on to the end and did not choose to come down from the cross is the reason why Christians live the lives they do and revere the symbol of a cross as the most potent and central reminder of their faith. It is the reason why millions of Christians gather at the foot of the cross on Good Friday.
Excerpted from Christ’s Seven Words from the Cross by John Mann (Introduction)
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The Joy of Belonging
The path to a better future, the future God desires for us, begins in the human heart, in our yearning to belong. In those desires is the road out of our crises, both our own and those of our world. By regenerating the bonds that bind us, in reoxygenating us to receive the gift that is our life and our world, we need first to know and experience the Giver, who is already here, waiting for us. There is no better manual for this than the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, and no greater spiritual guide in our time than Francis, the world’s first Jesuit pope.
Excerpted from to First Belong to God : On Retreat with Pope Francis by Austen Ivereigh (p.15)
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Reading the Moment…
What was lacking was that “blessed awareness that we are part of one another, that we are brothers and sisters of one another,” as Francis explained in Fratelli Tutti (32). This could be understood only with a spiritual lens. For Francis, the key to our capacity to confront and grow through these crises is a threefold belonging: to God, to creation, and to one another. The loss of our sense of belonging to a single human family that is part of creation has its roots in closing ourselves off from our Creator. The result is that we are uniquely ill-prepared to manage the transition to a better future.
Excerpted from to First Belong to God : On Retreat with Pope Francis by Austen Ivereigh (p.14)
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Every Christian is involved in a battle that defines his or her life
‘It is a struggle to overcome the temptation of closing in on ourselves, so that the love of the Father can make its home in us. When we make room for the Lord who rescues us from our self-sufficiency, we open up to all of creation and every creature. We become channels of the Father’s life and love. Only then do we realize what life truly is: a gift of the Father who loves us deeply and desires that we belong to him and to each other.’ Pope Francis
Excerpted from Pope Francis’ Foreword to First Belong to God : On Retreat with Pope Francis by Austen Ivereigh (p.11)
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You Are For Me
Lord, you want our world to be a safe and friendly place in which we can grow to our fullness. Although we mess up both ourselves and our fragile world, you’re always at work for our good. You restore and re-create what we spoil: that must keep you busy! What is to come will reveal the fullness of your loving: it won’t be a sorting out of the bad from the good – it doesn’t take a god to do that – but against all the odds, the winning over of the bad. ‘When everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.’ Such a brave statement in face of violence, hatred, wars, murders and betrayals of every sort – all the bad stuff of our daily news. This teaches me to be patient with myself, with others, and with all institutions, including the Church.
Excerpted from I Am Infinitely Loved: A Month of Meditations by Brian Grogan SJ (P.28)
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Giving Thanks
If it were the last evening of my life, and I were facing a terrible death, would I think of giving thanks? It’s more likely that I’d be a nervous wreck! If I were faced with thousands of hungry people, and all I had were five loaves and two fish, would I even take the time to be grateful? I’d probably just panic! Jesus gave thanks. That blows my mind. It’s a sign of his boundless trust in the Father. If you give thanks to the Father in a terribly difficult situation, you obviously trust him enormously. All Jesus had in his hands was something radically insufficient, but the loving gratitude of Jesus opens the gateway to abundance, because his gratitude enables the Father’s generosity to show itself. If you give thanks when everything around you is falling apart, that act of giving thanks helps you to hold things together, and it helps you to hold yourself together as well.
Excerpted from The Mindful Our Father by Thomas J Casey SJ (pp.101-102)
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